Participants:
| Scene Title | The Truth of a Lie |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | In the wake of a disturbing revelation, two women find their resolve. |
| Date | January 1, 2020 |
The door buzzes as Eve Mas enters the Visitation Center of PISEC.
There is no quip, jokes, smiles even. She arrived barefoot and the staff insisted she wear some sort of footwear so she walks in wearing a pair of prison slippers. That is exciting but Eve still feels numb. Normally she's a ball of energy but even unnegated her body doesn't crackle as much. Almost like she's literally lost her spark.
The dress she wears is a muted blue. Maybe she's saying something through her fashion sense. She wears a long black trenchcoat over the garment. Crimson eyes buzz as she looks around the place. Searching for her family. Hair as wild as ever, wind blown. Did she travel by conventional means? (Probably not).
Des has to know.
She's a part of this.
Do you see it? Are you here now?
Maybe she's always looking.
You were never a seer.
I wasn't.
Eve is left waiting only a scant couple of minutes before a door on the other end of the room opens and Odessa Price enters. Initially, she’s greeted with a smile by her cousin, but it fades quickly, the blonde’s steps faltering on her path. She pauses a moment, studying Eve from across the room with wide blue eyes, concern plain to see on her face.
The distance is closed quickly now, Odessa reaching out to rest her hands on Eve’s arms, but not drawing her in for an embrace just yet. “What’s wrong?” She can feel the defeat within her. It makes her feel like a stone sinking slowly to the bottom of a well. “What’s happened?”
"A lie. All the lie. It's all a lie." Eve steps closer to Odessa and just stands there on the verge of tears. "It came to me, it came to see. Me. At home." Her body trembles and she tries to get a handle on herself.
"She gave me my visions. All of them. She went back, after we came to her. We were lost, she righted our way but she saw a way in. We were a piece, two pieces. To get her here." Eve's speech is rapid and she tries to breathe.
You gave a way, you gave access.
You were never a seer.
"I was never a seer." She whispers with eyes growing wider by the second, she raises a shaky hand and smacks it onto her own shoulder. "I don't know… I.."
“Hey, hey, hey.” Odessa reaches up and cups Eve’s face in her hands, her eyes wide and frightened by what she’s witnessing. Eve is vibrant. Eve is life itself. Eve doesn’t do this. “Come on, come on,” she whispers gently, brushing her thumb over one of her cousin’s cheeks. “You’re not making any sense. I need you to start from the beginning. I’m not inside your head. I can’t see what you’ve seen.”
Helplessly, Odessa shakes her head. She doesn’t invite Eve to sit, not just yet. Something about this moment tells her she needs to be on her own two feet. There’s power in standing your ground. Eve clearly needs power right now. Strength. Odessa would lend her some of her own if she could. “Who came to visit you? Who gave you your visions?”
"The Dragon," Eve tries to slow down and breathe, though it proves harder than she thinks. Still she stands on her own and nods slowly. "Last night, it came to me. Said I had always been its herald." The taller woman sucks in a breath.
"When we went back and met it? I saw what happened. What I am now… my cloud… it came from her then. It’s like… it had been inside me the whole time. Growing." It's unnerving, and she's unsure how to feel still, but she stands on her own. "Every single vision, every single connection. Forged by It. I was… I was never a seer."
It feels earth shattering. Unreal. "We couldn't have known, never known. What we had done, delivered ourselves right to it from the start." Techincally not for Eve and Odessa but for Adam and The Entity, sure.
While Eve tells her story, Odessa continues to caress her face like she might soothe a child after a nightmare. Her breath catches in her chest. What she’s saying only makes the barest bit of sense, but Odessa can piece it together well enough. Horror dawns on her slowly by degrees.
“I healed you,” she breathes out, mouth having fallen open into a soft ‘o’ shape that matches the shock in her eyes. She didn’t see what Eve saw, but she knows it in her bones. “I couldn’t understand it at the time. We were so… The Refrain addled everything. But I know now. That’s what happened that night.” The grey streak in her hair, the sensation that there was something different about Eve after that day.
“I wish I could… If I still had my power, I could feel it. I would know.” All they have now is supposition, in spite of her unwavering trust that what she believes is true. “We… looped.”
Now, Odessa lowers herself to sink onto the nearby sofa, drawing Eve in to join her. “My life is a daisy chain of Möbius strips.” Which is to say that this all makes some horrifying kind of sense. “I… I think I was a vessel when I was young,” Odessa admits. “I don’t know what that means now. What it means for any of us…” Maybe it means she’s a danger to herself and the ones she loves, no matter how much she may wish otherwise.
"You… Wait…" Eve looks down at her hands, the possibility hitting her hard and she staggers almost, able to be drawn to the sofa easier.
Ticktock.
Ticktock.
She blinks and sits there holding Odessa's hand. "Vessels, both of us." Squeezing with a shocked expression on her face, "At least we know now. Why it is, how it is, why it happened like that."
You will die.
Ticktock.
You will die.
Eve does her level best to ignore the voices taunting her, chiding herself. How much time did she have left?
Not long enough.
But maybe enough time to finish what she started, what they had started. "This world is sick, it wants to heal it." It still feels unreal, this couldn't have happened. This all couldn't be true. "All this time, I thought they wanted to dominate our world. Enslave us, its Children of the Eclipse but no… it doesn't care about us. It wants to unite all the worlds. Every timeline, blended and flatten to a pancake." A circle the Entity had said but Eve is still gonna Eve. World turned upside down or not.
"I don't know what to do. I think I've failed." All this work.
Odessa’s face stays contorted with the horror of it all. “That dream,” she realizes suddenly. “You were there. I thought it was just a nightmare, but… It really happened, didn’t it?” She shakes her head slightly. “When nobody came to knock my door down, I assumed I was just in my head.”
Price laces fingers with Mas, holding their hands in the space between them, face urgent. “Eve, I need you to keep a secret. You can’t tell anybody else. Not Richard. Not… Not even Gillian. Nobody. Can you do that?”
"It was real, Cousin. I swear it by the blood we both share." They actually might not, but fuck that! Eve wanted a cousin and so did Odessa! Eve leans in when her cousin laces their fingers together.
A secret?
"We're family. Our secrets are our own. Always."
There's a beat and Eve squints, "Are you the one that switched my weed to oregano?" It would be a good cousinly thing to do! But Odessa's face says its not as little as that. "Ok, ok, I promise, no games." She seals the deal by holding up her pinky. You never ever go back on one of those.
Odessa links her pinky with Eve’s. Her chest feels tight, breath caught somewhere in the area of her sternum, squeezed out of her by the pounding of her heart. Her head tips forward to rest against her cousin’s, temple to temple. She swallows back a wave of fear. Admitting the truth out loud feels dangerous. It likely is.
“I manifested,” she whispers, breath shaky against the shell of Eve’s ear. “I can…” Her eyes close, fingers tighten around Eve’s. Tongue darts between dry lips. “I can feel your fear. Like it’s my own. You’re terrified.” That’s not the most revelatory thing to say, it’s obvious to anybody that Eve is afraid. “I can tell what other people around me are feeling. All the time.”
Odessa embraces Eve tightly, keeping her lips against her ear. “You promised not to tell anyone. Remember. Not a soul,” she whispers urgently. She can’t tell if she’s scared now that she’s released her secret to the universe, or if it’s residual from Eve.
Eve rears back, her emotions laid out before her cousin. The terror is replaced by wonder and pride. She laughs out loud, "Nothing can keep the Mas girls down!" YEEHAW!
She stops and looks closely at Odessa, "My lips are sealed! They don't-" Eve lowers her voice. "They haven't realized? The Big House is not forgiving, Cousin." She would hate for Odessa to get in trouble. "You can always say you didn't know!" They would believe her! She's credible- well both Mas women had a little bit of a shaky side with the whole credibility thing. That's what happens when you lie a lot. But at least they had each other.
"Can you do like the Hunteress Huruma? Can you change my fear?" Eve is hopeful, at least so she can stop feeling this way.
Odessa shakes her head quickly. “No. I haven’t told anyone.” Which is a selective version of the truth. “And, no. Not like that.” She sighs quietly. “As far as I can tell, all it is, is a damn headache.” Eve is given another tight squeeze before she draws back again for a conversation distance.
But the marked change in Eve’s emotion is uplifting for Odessa. “Don’t be afraid,” she she tells her cousin, cupping her face again. “We’re going to get through this. Together. There isn’t a force in the multiverse that can stand against the two of us. We’re Mas women. Not even death can stop us.”
"Mmm headaches running rampant, once your brainpan adjusts you won't feel headachy at all!" Mental powers went like that Eve figured.
It's so strange being so close to someone, family like Eve is in this moment. Her sisters had been dead since before the war she was sure. Odessa and Eve were all the two had left. There was a piece of the darker haired woman who wanted to tell Odessa that they didn't share blood but something told her that to do that would rip something away that these two women needed desperately.
Tears of joy spring forth from Eve's eyes and she nods her head, pressing her forehead against Odessa's, "Ok, you're right. Not even death can stop us. Mas Women, through and through."
There is power to be found in family.
If there’s one thing that keeps Odessa’s feet planted firmly on the ground, it’s the notion of having family. Not being alone in the world. She plants a kiss on the corner of Eve’s mouth, content to simply sit and hold tight to her. Foreheads touching, fingers laced. To enjoy a quiet moment amidst the chaos of their lives and know that whatever’s coming…
They’ll have each other.
Meanwhile
Sitting back in his desk, George Strickland curls one hand up by his mouth as he considers what he's seen over the security feed. Staring at his laptop screen, Strickland picks at his lips and looks from the footage of Eve Mas and Odessa Price down to paperwork half filled out. He is still for a long while, glancing over text on the pages.
RECOMMENDATION FOR RELEASE
His brows furrow.
PRICE, ODESSA
Sliding his tongue across his teeth, Strickland reaches out and shuts his laptop, then sweeps the papers off of his desk into a trash bin. He sits back in his chair again, pinching forefingers and thumb at the bridge of his nose for a few moments, then pivots in his chair and picks up his office landline, keying in a phone number as he tucks the receiver between shoulder and chin.
“This is Strickland,” he says to whoever picks up on the other end. “Of course, I'll hold.” He says, briefly looking at his laptop while waiting for the other end of the call to resolve.
“We may have a situation on our hands,” Strickland says when someone on the other end picks up. “Yes, I understand that. I think we need to re-evaluate Ms. Price,” he adds, brows furrowed. “Oh and, could you pass along a message to Secretary Lazzaro for me?”
Strickland looks back to the closed laptop. “The Eve Mas situation is more serious than anyone expected.”